With the advent of sophisticated telecommunication services, telecommunication consumers frequently desire to utilize speed calling. In the prior art, telephone customers are able to utilize speed calling by, first, personally defining a list of telephone numbers that they frequently call, and second, by manually entering or programming all of those numbers into predefined locations within the user's telephone or the switching equipment of the local telephone network. Once the list is individually defined and manually programmed, the user may typically speed dial a number on the list by entering a short sequence of digits, or by pressing a programmed button on the user's telephone.
There are many difficulties and inconveniences associated with such current speed calling approaches. First, the user must take the time to define their individual speed calling list, and then take additional time to program each such number into the telecommunication equipment once the list is individually defined. Second, such programming is typically not user-friendly, and consumers often experience frustration and dissatisfaction with such required programming. Third, the user must personally manage the speed calling list, keeping track of each speed dial digit sequence which corresponds to each speed dial number, or keeping track of each name and number corresponding to a programmed speed dial button. Yet another disadvantage of current speed calling approaches, the user must also manually update their speed calling list, to add new numbers and names, and to delete other numbers and names. These current approaches to speed calling tend to be inconvenient, frustrating, and frequently annoying and dissatisfying to the typical consumer of telecommunication services.
As a consequence, a need remains for an apparatus, method and system that may be used by a telecommunication consumer to automatically speed dial their outgoing calls. Such speed calling should be automatic and occur without personal interruption and inconvenience, such as without any need to personally define and manually program a speed calling list. Rather, such speed calling should include automatically generating and managing a user specific speed calling database or list, without any required user intervention. Such an apparatus, method and system should be user friendly, and should be personalized and automatically tailored to the needs, tastes and preferences of individual customers. In addition, the apparatus, method and system should be cost effective and capable of implementation in existing telecommunication systems.